Score One for the Man From Uranus

The last couple weeks of summer are usually not the time when TV flips your head around and makes you say "Holy Cow!" every time you turn the thing on. The fall shows have yet to begin and August is usually considered a slow news month. I should, by rights, be cocooned in a dark, air-conditioned room paying attention to not much else besides getting caught up on episodes of Mad Men , season 2, so that I could then catch up with season 3, airing now and currently causing gay-hating viewers to freak out over a man-on-man sex scene. That ought to have totally occupied my free time until Labor Day and I could have more or less ignored everything else. As a be-suited, skinny-necktied member of the Joan Holloway Appreciation Society I believe it's my right. And I'm determined not to get left behind as the '60s roll on and the clothes become more and more sloppy. I mean, yes, this show revels in a period of American history before there were civil rights for people of color, women, and gays. But at least everybody looked really great.

Where was I? Oh, yes, saying things like "Holy Cow!" and continuing my flabbergastment (I know it's not really a word, but I just decided it was) at what passes for political discourse in this country. Because the slow news month became a volcanic news month over health care reform, a topic I'm sort of obsessed with right now. I'm obsessed with it because I can't believe I live in a country full of people who are so damn rock-stupid. And I know it's not nice to call people stupid. But they are. Stupid like rocks. Stupid rock-people who refuse to think or read or process information or weigh facts or know when they're being manipulated by big corporations. There's no other explanation for the wild antics I'm seeing on the news. We're feral animals determined to rip each other apart the first chance we get. And, of course, the minute the obnoxious, idiot hillbillies start screaming and calling a health care plan Nazi-like and drawing Hitler moustaches on pictures of Obama (it's easier to do that than spend a long time ironing the Klan outfit), that's the moment when our recently elected conservative Democrats back down and retreat into their shells.

Except Barney Frank, that big beautiful man from Uranus. (Rush Limbaugh's words, not mine, by the way -- but thank you for that one, Rush, because gay jokes about Uranus are never not funny, even when assholes like you belch them up.

When Keith Olbermann commented on Limbaugh's ha-ha moment and clucked in his superior bald eagle voice, "What person over 12 thinks Uranus is funny?" my husband paused the TiVo, looked at me, and said, "I know one."

Anyway, by now you've seen the clip of Barney Frank's foul-calling behavior toward the jerkface woman who informed him that he was supporting a "Nazi policy" by working toward a public health insurance option, just in case he didn't know. And if you didn't see it, I'll recap a little here. She was holding one of those charming signs featuring our biracial president done up like Hitler and telling a gay Jew that he was a Nazi collaborator. This didn't sit well with Mr. Frank and he shut her down with the quickness, asked her what planet she lived on, then he called her comments vile and said that arguing with her was like arguing with a dining room table.

THIS IS BECAUSE BARNEY FRANK IS FUCKING AWESOME.

I want that man's adorable squashy mug on a T-shirt now. Fox News, of course, called him rude (not Hitler Lady, though, she was just exercising her free speech). And so what if he was? I'm high on his rudeness. It's about damn time someone fought fire with fire and verbally bashed back at these knuckleheads who understand nothing but fear and selfishness and who want to tantrum their way into decimating something good for the country. I'm fed up with apologetic responses that all sound like, "Oh, good heavens, no! We would never euthanize your grandmother! Oh, our feelings are hurt that you'd suggest it!" So thank you, Barney Frank, you're my #1 gay hero this week.

My second is Tim Gunn. But that's already documented pretty deeply on this site, since I used to exhaustively recap Project Runway in kookoo-bananas detail. And while those days are over, when you're done skimming this column you can enjoy the new shrunken recaps of Runway I'm handcrafting now over at Out.com's Popnography page. I'll link you at the end. Don't stress.

And finally, I really like these gays here: